Esi Edugyan

Esi Edyugan is a literary fiction author from Alberta, Canada. She is the daughter of Ghanaian parents that moved to Canada when she was still a baby. She made her fiction writing debut writing short stories that would be published in anthologies before she published her debut novel “The Second Life of Samuel Tyne” in 2004. The bestselling novel would make the shortlist for the Wright/Hurston Legacy Award. Edyugan then published “Half Blood Blues”, her second novel that told the story of a mixed race jazz band in Second World War Berlin and Paris. Esi’s second novel made the shortlist for the Literary Award for Fiction by the Canadian Governor General, Trust Fiction Prize by the Rogers Writers’ Trust and also made the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. She is also the author of “Dreaming of Elsewhere,” a non fiction work that she published in 2014. She has also been a creative writing professor at the University of Victoria and Johns Hopkins University.